Poetry, like music, is to be heard. It deals in sound - long sounds and short sounds, heavy beats and light beats, the tone relations of vowels, the relations of consonants to one another . . . Reading in silence is the source of half the misconceptions that have caused the public to distrust poetry.

-- Basil Bunting, quoted by Richard Caddel in "Minor Poet, Not Conspicuously Dishonest" Jacket 10

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